AAPL: Oppenheimer Pounds Table; ‘Legitimate’ Issues Will Pass

By Tiernan Ray

Shares of Apple (AAPL) are down $11.25, or 2%, at $546.75, following some harsh words from Jeff Gundlach of Doubleline Capital, a negative op-ed in The Guardian, and some ominous technical advice yesterday. as Oppenheimer & Co.’s Ittai Kidron today comes to the stock’s defense.

“We are buyers of Apple on recent weakness,” writes Kidron. “We see good potential for a near-term rebound to ~$620 before experiencing resistance.”

Apple’s stock currently reflects worries about the macroeconomic situation, the prospect the iPad will lose tablet market share, the recent management shuffly, and erosion of margins, writes Kidron.

But “the shares embed too much pessimism regarding headwinds and execution,” and “Apple’s competitive position is unchanged and see it better position with a refreshed portfolio across all key segments heading into 2013.”

Kidron thinks margin and concerns and the like are legitimate concerns about margin and market share, but such matters will turn out alright:

We believe Apple’s measured Dec. guidance reflects a complicated and extensive product transition across iPhone/ iPad/Mac, which stretched Apple’s supply-chain and internal resources. This was too much to digest in a short period for margins, but we see it leaving Apple strongly positioned heading into 2013 despite macro headwinds.

And the “fiscal cliff” is a passing matter:

Tax questions. Investor concerns about looming dividend tax changes and uncertainty around a new capital gains tax policy are a persistent noise. This could cause some selling to lock-in gains, but it would also be a temporary phenomenon and is embedded into our thinking regarding the $620 resistance level.

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There are 37 comments

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 11:24 A.M.

Dave wrote:

Jeff Gundlach is a moron. He's saying negative stuff about Apple because he is short the stock as he made it clear. Then, why would anyone be surprised by what he said? What about all the possitive aspects of Apple's products? Why would anyone think that people are going to stop buying ipads and iphones these upcoming holidays seasons?

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 11:24 A.M.

Bill wrote:

The only one being " Pounded " is Tim Cook! F him

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 11:32 A.M.

Ed wrote:

Steve Jobs is rolling in his grave watching these A holes destroy what he left them. Tim Cook was left in charge to execute, execute, and execute and release new products that were perfect. He has done none of these and in fact, has thrown away Apple’s money into a Useless Dividend, and has failed on new product releases badly and his execution has been horriffic. Steve gave him the keys to the number 1 company in the World, and Tim Cook has turned Apple in into the Joke Company on Wallstreet and late night TV. God Bless Steve Jobs.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 12:17 P.M.

No Jeff wrote:

Can't stay long, on my way to the BMW dealer! Wow what a run, I didn't really understand the power of leverage until this past month. My friend is a technical day trading guru and he convinced me to do something I never do, buy puts. I was a newbie after getting laid off as an IT Sys Admin. Wow what a wild ride, I could never have imagined a 20% move on aapl in just a few weeks, resulting in an over 500% return on my leveraged $10,000 investment. Goin' let at least half this ride for at least another 50 points before caching in my chips, made more this morning than I made working last year. Finally made it, thank you Timmie Cook!

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 12:21 P.M.

Leonid Surpin wrote:

I am firmly on the side of Jeff Gundlach. I do want to add to the case that Jeff makes Apple supply chain. Apple is extremely vulnerable to actions of Chinese government, as many other companies are. However, in case of Apple there are no plan B, and I do not feel comfortable relying on Chinese good will. I just finished reading article about new Chinese conscience regarding to environment. I view it as another ploy to tax foreign companies even more and set up a mechanism where Chinese can close them down at will.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 12:26 P.M.

Paulo Lin wrote:

I predicted Apple would drop to under $500 when they announced the iphone 5 which in my opinion has nothing innovative to offer. I don't believe for one second that the lack of iphone 5 sales are due to supply. I have plenty of people I know that have waited no more than a week for the iphone 5. I agree, Apple has lost their ability to innovate. It's no longer a big thrill to have an Apple product.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 12:32 P.M.

Warren B wrote:

620 resistance level? It's a $450 stock and a great company, just an overbught short term bubble. It went vetical way too quickly ...just like housing prices and we know how that story ended. Be smart, buy cheap.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 12:38 P.M.

Tom wrote:

If I had the spare cash I would put it all into Apple. It's future P/E ratio is ridiculously low to the market and the stock is vastly undervalued at present. Sure it was always going to drop after the huge speedy rise of the last year or so but it's still undervalued and over time it will slowly go back up to be close to what it's worth. Look at the financials of Apple and try and pick out the negative items. There are none! The only reason they are viewed as disappointing by some is because Apple has set such a high standard for itself that the analysts predictions have become unattainable. In the short term I see it going down, maybe touching $500 again. But with the festive season coming up, they will have huge sales as people still want Apple produts and I can see it heading above and beyond the record high in the future. Not the near future, but over the course of the next 2-3 years as the stock rises at a rate that can be sustained, unlike the current rate that it has risen at.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 12:41 P.M.

Greg - Apple Trader wrote:

I agree with Gundlach for some of his reasons and many others.

1) Fiscal Cliff
2) Vertical Takeoff ahead of any notable innovations and no Apple TV
3) Competition from Kindle wth a $169 Kindle HD Reader that allows you to surf the net
4) Competition from an easier to use Samsung Galaxy 3
5) Lack of new products
6)Key employee defections & loss of main product guru Steve Jobs
7) Supply side issues as a result of factpry conditions in China
8)Chinese elections
9) Selling a lower margin iPad mini which cannibalzies the iPad - anyone onn budget goes for the cheaper one , so why make a cheaper version that destroys your high end market?
10) Apple should have created a cell phone carrier/company - that would have been innovative
11) Apple TV???????? when, where and what

Can go as low as $400, it was $370 this time last yr, and the outlook and product cycle were more promising, combine this with Apple Mgmt's guidance ( read their conference call and press release ) and even Apple knows they are in for much slower growth ahead. Once they stop growing as quickly, they fall into unfavored territory amongst investors and hedge funds who drove it up. Cheers -

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 12:45 P.M.

Sammy wrote:

A fool and his money are soon parted. Learned this lesson the hard way with many technology stocks. How much Apple does Warren Buffett hold? yes, 0 %

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 12:58 P.M.

Paulo Lin wrote:

Well said Sammy, and down she goes!

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 1:09 P.M.

Anonymous wrote:

Apart from macro concerns. There's no rational reason for it to go down. Shareholders are being manipulated. The stock and the company are being fudded. Look at Bill and the others here. Everyday they show up and say the same stupid pissy things. Like where's the company losing money? They aren't. And have consumers drifted away as numbers decline? No. Buying continues to rise. And is Apple losing ground to its competition? No.

So please. Especially you Bill. FUKC OFF. And get cholera.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 1:24 P.M.

Michael_LaCagnina wrote:

IPod, iPhone, iPad and now iPlummet.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 1:30 P.M.

Kalpesh Kapadia wrote:

Fundamentals:

Q1) Beyond CY 2013 where we have $211 Billion in sales and $57.7 in EPS, are sales and earnings going to grow or are they going to be flat or down?
A1) We believe Sales in CY 2014 could go to $244 Billion and EPS can top out at $64.5 solely based on current products with no visibility on Apple TV or any other new product category, however, we do assume a low cost iphone at $349 (w/o the contract) in the model.

Q2) Will various tax increases coming down the pike, crimp discretionary spending such that people will not buy a new iphone or ipad or ipad mini?
A2) There is no evidence of that being true. At this point, it's just a conjecture. Is there slow down in gadget sales in Japan as a result of stagnant incomes, no GDP growth in the last 15 years? However, in Europe it is playing out in some countries like Spain and Greece. But then again, they have 25% and 40% unemployment. My opinion is that people will cut down on a lot of other things before they stop buying iphones and ipads.

Q3) Taxes going up on Dividend and Capital gains is causing Apple to Sell off since it has been such a big winner?
A3) I find this to be nonsensical since, if you worried that if Obama won, capital gains and dividend taxes will go up, then with the exception of the Month of October, it never felt like Romney was going to win. As such you could have sold the stock and raised your cost basis at each 365 day cliff and booked long term gain. Additionally, we don’t know if capital gains will go up to 20% or 28% and once there is resolution, you still can sell on the very last day of 2012. if that is the case, then why are other long term winners not selling off like Apple.

Q4) There is no big product innovation coming from Apple since Steve Jobs is gone.
A4) As if Steve was the only one dreaming up things in his garage/bedroom. From everything I know about Apple, Steve was not the innovator in chief (Johnny Ive said it as much in Steve's eulogy). Steve was a marketing genius. As to innovation, he often took other people's ideas and championed them or killed them. He had a good sense of timing in terms of seeing when the market was ready for something. Case in point, Microsoft launched tablet computers in 2002, some 8 years before the market was ready. Even Apple launched Newton years before the market was ready.

Steve Jobs had an ability to hit the market at the right time, right in that sweet spot, when the cost of producing displays, NAND flash etc have come down, battery technology has improved, miniaturization is possible is when Apple has launched iphones and ipads. Besides, nobody is giving them credit for innovation on process technology, production tooling, industrial design, chip technology, power management etc. In these areas, Apple seems to be years ahead of its competition, eg, in-cell display makes iphone 5 thinner and lighter than anything else in the market and to be able to produce 50 million of them a quarter, is no small feat.

In short, yes Steve Jobs will be missed, but with Johnny Ive and $125 billion in the bank, Apple can buy its way into any market and acquire any technology.

Q5) Management turnover with Scott Forestall and John browett?
A5) While both these departures are concerning, again, with $125 billion, forstall is replaceable. These things have happened while Steve was around as well. There had been steady stream of high level turnover during Jobs tenure as well. You can look at it as glass half full or glass half empty. Bulls would argue that Forstall was disruptive and was not a team player and Cook was looking to streamline and foster team work etc etc. Forstall was fired for insubordination and that is quite important since if you tolerate that, it can lead to a revolt. Privately, I heard there was a sense of jubilation inside the company with forstall's departure being compared to Giants winning the world series. That is always a good sign that if the morale is boosted by someone's departure.

As to Browett, it was Tim Cook's first big hire and it reflects negatively on his judgment. However, he quickly corrected his mistake. As they say, hire slowly, fire quickly.

Q6) Gross margins have peaked.
A6) A valid concern, but unlikely. Apple is the most vertically integrated company from everything from chips, devices, production tooling all the way to retail. If channel margins are 20-25%, Apple keeps most of it in addition to their device margins. if Device gross margins are 35% for best in class PC maker Lenovo to best in class smartphone maker Samsung, then Apple can easily maintain 40-45% gross margins as such 36% gross margins guidance in their biggest product launch quarter seem like a low point.

Technicals and quantitative:

Q 1) Broke 200 DMA of 585 and next stop is decisively to 530 and if that breaks, then to 425.
A1) Momentum in reverse. This is affected by ownership of the stock by closet indexers, retail investors, hedge funds etc. etc. Index funds and Mutual funds that are benchmarked to index, had to buy it as it went up in weight in S&P 500. Now the reverse is true. I believe it could retest 530 but 425 seems unlikely.

Q2) Overowned. I buy this argument but it sure does look less overowned at 550 then it was at 700.

What to do now:

My recommendation is to ride it to 530 and once holiday season starts with black Friday, Apple stores will look crowded and stock will perform from late November all the way through January earnings.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 1:32 P.M.

BC2009 wrote:

You bears are morons. Apple's biggest problems:

1) So much demand that they cannot make enough units.

2) So much anticipation that they have to compete with their rumored next version in the months before it releases because main-stream media actually reports on Apple rumors.

Apple sells 3M iPads in 3 days and yet I see reports that the iPad mini will struggle to compete with the Nexus 7 at its $329 price. Anybody notice that Asus reports that after 3 months they are nearing 1M units per month -- that means that they have yet to sell 3M Nexus 7 units at cost while the iPad sold 3M units in a weekend at a healthy profit.

If Steve Jobs is rolling in his grave it is not because of Tim Cook -- it is because he is having a hearty "ROFL" over the investors and the analysts bearish sentiments on AAPL stock. Apparently Apple only has two states in the eyes of some of these morons: they are either going to rule the universe or at least purchase the USA in its entirety or they are going to crumble to their doom.

The recent executive team shake up is the best freaking news in 12 months for the company. Forstall was the only moron on the executive team since without Jobs he was left unchecked. Now he is gone and the guy who should have been overseeing product is now in charge.

It never ceases to amaze me how much stupidity there is among AAPL investors. Apparently AAPL is a Cinderella stock and when the clock strikes 12 it all ends in one night. Yet so many idiots were investing in RIM well after it was clear in 2009 that they were on their way out. Nobody is making better products than Apple -- just look at the tech reviews at any website. They have top-ranked phone, the top-ranked tablets, and the top-ranked computers. Couple that with the most valuable brand and the highest customer satisfaction rating 8 years running, over $120B in the bank, no debt and 10 years of astonishing growth.

Yeah sure... Apple is doomed.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 1:41 P.M.

No Jeff wrote:

Hi BC2009. I just arrived at the BMW dealership here in SJ. Which pumkin do you recommend a moron like me should drop $65K of you Bul$ on? I like the Candy AAPL red one...

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 1:41 P.M.

Anonymous wrote:

If I recall correctly, a couple of weeks back there were some analysts pounding the table for Apple's upward movement but that was when Apple was still near $600. All that pounding did was break the table's legs and Apple fell all that much further down. Forget about pounding tables. Apple will fall or rise whether the table is pounded or not.

Every Apple bull keeps trying to put a rational spin on Apple's fall and why it should rise again, but this market has little irrationality. Wall Street will prop up weak companies and take down strong ones because they have vested interests in certain companies. There's no rational reason Apple should fall $150 because of a poor map app or slightly missed quarter. That's just plain BS.

Cook isn't helping any by not having the skills to ramp up iPhone production while he's got $120 billion stashed in his back yard. Android is already taking away Apple's market share. We don't need some idiot giving market share away by having constant inventory shortages. It's hard to know who's more to blame, the crooks and cheats on Wall Street or Tim Cook's lack of balls, smarts or both. He can't just sit back and allow Google and Amazon to steal from the Apple empire when he could probably crush both companies with proper use of that wasted reserve cash. As a shareholder, I find it very frustrating. I hate the idea of seeing all the effort that a sick Steve Jobs put into rebuilding Apple and have some addle-brained doofus destroy it in a year or so. Tim Cook needs to grow a pair. Call a media conference or something to explain what the hell is going on with Apple.

Consumers will buy iPhones and iPads, but only if they have them in stock. Lately, that's the main problem. No stock available. Cook needs to do a lot better than just say he's sorry.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 1:53 P.M.

Ed wrote:

The time has come for Tim Cook to Strap it on and break out of his little Apple Bubble in La la Land and LEAD THIS F COMPANY!

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 2:12 P.M.

Take it Over wrote:

Could aapl become a takeover target? Could AMZN leverage the cash on aapls balance sheet and buy the thing outright. Lowering AMZNs PE while still mantaining its PEG? Is that possible if aapl drops say another $50 or so?

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 3:23 P.M.

chris wrote:

First time commenting on any board about anything. But I feel compelled t to give my stance in case anyone reading this has the capacity to think for themselves but may be doubting the validity of their rational opinions. Mine is that this is just part of the media manipulated short-long-short-long near-term aapl cycle. Fundamentals haven't changed and in the long term aapl will trade on fundamentals. Current trailing p/e is 12.33, about the low that it hit last November (2011). Maybe will go down a little more, maybe not, but it doesn't matter b/c it won't stay in this low part of the range for long. Considering the huge amount of negative sentiment around apple (including this board) the fall in price has just about peaked so it will bounce soon and likely continue to go up until at least earnings without any type of substantial pull-back (because of Xmass and new year). Based on the typical situation the past couple years, when it does start to go up on strong volume this will be a good signal and it will likely bounce to a p/e in the 13-14 range (around $600) within a few days, and will maybe go up faster b/c of how far it has fallen and b/c of possible short squeeze. Then it will probably take a few weeks or so to get to $680 or so. I'm guessing strongly that the price will be at least flirting with $700 at some point the beginning of Jan but maybe as high as touching $750. I only wish that I had more money to put into the pot at today but don't because I've been buying with every big move down over the past 6 weeks and as of yesterday am completely divested of cash and all other stocks that I once had. FYI, I do not currently hold any hedges (but I have hedged apple investments in the past and trimmed some of my position around $685 before buying it back, but not enough) because right now the stock is so obscenely undervalued, trading at an anomalously low p/e that the stock has only seen rarely and always briefly. The fundamentals have not changed. In fact, despite what some here have said the rate of growth is increasing across the board (except for ipods), regardless of market share fluxuations. Growth, but not necessarily rate of growth will likely continue for iphone and ipad for at least several years because the overall market will continue to grow for smart phones and tablets. Also, Mac sales are growing despite overall decline in the market for computers in general. Also, Currently apple's cash accounts for almost 25% of the share price and they have no debt. Cash on hand is also growing by 10s of $billions per year and the rate of growth in cash is also increasing despite the dividend they are now paying out. But, lets ridiculously assume that from today apple's earnings growth completely stops and the cost of these earnings remains at this level for the next decade: at today's p/e the amount of cash apple will hold at the end of the next decade will entirely account for the price of apple stock today.

I admit that there's a chance I'm wrong about what will happen in the short, mid and long term to the stock price but I'm much more confident acting on my own judgement from my observations and analyses, or even on a random coin flip, than I am in making decisions based on the guesses or arguments of anyone else that are not backed up by anything cogent. I haven't yet heard any guesses/arguments against being bullish in apple in the mid or long term that hold any water and don't also apply to nearly every stock. Please let me know if you've got one and I'll consider cashing out now and buying microsoft or nokia.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 3:36 P.M.

Mike Sellers wrote:

I love the comment section - what a bunch of drama queens!

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 3:44 P.M.

Woodman123 wrote:

No Jeff, thanks for your obnoxious and uninsightful comments. Basically you had dumb luck based on a friend's tip. Yipeee. Maybe you should make a career in Vegas. Figures you'd dump your gains into a car, a BMW no less. May you and your Beemer end up in a river on the ride home.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 4:02 P.M.

Dominick wrote:

BC2009,

Smart. Compare Apples two tablets to a single tablet instead of the market of what, 10? 20? 30 at a whole? It's not ipad VS nexus 7. It's ipad VS Android. And, now Windows 8.

Windows 8 is going to eat everyones lunch.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 4:31 P.M.

Brandon wrote:

I don't know why every article mentioning Gundlach's statement doesn't explicitly state that he has a short position the stock. Wow, I wonder why he's saying that AAPL is going to drop?

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 4:47 P.M.

Peter wrote:

Lets see what has happened since Apple went from 705 to 538.
Appel has released the most extensive and innovative portfolio of new products in their history with tremendous innovation.

These are remarkable products yet the market has wrongly said there is no new innovation at Apple. I would say these are the best products Apple has ever produced.
Apple is a very secretive company and no one knows what their earnings will be until they report their quarterly numbers. In between
quarters Apple can be a very manipulated stock. Apple is down 20% on no real news and it would be one thing if the stock were expensive but it is now selling below a market multiple.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 5:04 P.M.

Anonymous wrote:

@No Jeff

We totally believe that an hour and 20 minutes after your first post when you said you could not stay long because you were on your way to a BMW dealership that you had arrived, picked up your iPhone/iPad and checked for new comments on this article and posted a reply to me. That's what most people do when $65,000 lands in their lap after being laid off as Sys Admin and they are about to go buy a new BMW. We totally believe you. You are obviously trolling and in the long run a hole mess of you morons are going to be kicking yourselves when the real investors pickup all these shares on the cheap and sell them for over $800 each next year.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 5:14 P.M.

Bryanyc wrote:

"Windows 8 is going to eat everyones lunch."

Lunch is over, it has all been eaten. Microsoft came late and won't be having any of the delicious sandwiches. It's now getting close to dinner time.

While everyone has been fudding about all the normal difficulties of managing one of the largest companies and most massive supply chains in the world, those smart folks at Apple have been hard at work preparing for a really big dinner by investing huge amounts in capital expenditures.

I've been in Apple for more than a decade and I have seen this scenario played out, with some variation, a number of times. What you don't see is the folks who whined and bitched and laughed at the company come back and say they were completely, massively off base. There are a lot of those losers. Just make sure you are smart and don't listen to them in situations like this.

Lets all talk in half a year OK? Will everyone promise to come back and discuss their comments then? Put it into your calendar guys.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 5:17 P.M.

Ralph PEtrillo wrote:

Most of the decline or 45 points have come after the election without a regard to sales. Only negative momentum bringing it lower. Time to buy. Look for Apple to test 640 by end of December. Political agreement will be reached and entire stock market will rebound 5%. Apple will go up 10%.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 7:44 P.M.

Dr. Anthony wrote:

One cannot remove psychology from the valuation equation as much as I would prefer to do just that. Vested and coordinated interests have executed a brilliant "destroy Apple" media campaign that preys upon investor's fears and susceptibility to sophomoric psychological ploys. These same vested interests took the opposite approach with Amazon, currently trading 130 times PE and still, it can do no wrong. Loses money, sells products with no margin. Compared to Apple, now selling at 9.5 time PE, healthy margins and 15 to 20% growth built into their conservative model for the next 5 years and they, on the other hand can do nothing right. Its all psychology, but that is where it gets tricky because psychology is ALL YOU NEED to make a stock go up or down. The more interesting question is this: "What did Apple do to permit, allow, encourage its wholesale trashing?" Is this nothing more than mankind's predictable desire to bring down greatness, no matter where they find it or who it is? Everybody's trying to bring everybody else down to make them feel better.

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 11:25 P.M.

Anonymous wrote:

How is everyone still hacking Gundlach for stating that he's shorting Apple? He was being interviewed. He's required to state if he has a vested interest in the stocks he's discussing. And it's not like everyone has to listen to his advice. If you don't agree with him then don't short it. Seriously, just because one guy says something about a stock doesn't mean he's definitively right or wrong. It just so happens he was one of the first guys to say he doesn't see Apple continuing it's run. It's the reverse situation of when a couple of analysts predicted Apple shooting to $1000. Nobody had actually come out and made a claim like that yet, so it made the news.

At the end of the day, Apple makes huge profits from the mobile phone market. And that is a tricky market to stay on top of. RIM was the king of the mobile world for a while and look what happened. It wasn't that it really "did" anything wrong. Blackberry's are great smartphones. But once everyone had one, they weren't that "cool" anymore, so a lot of people wanted to try something different, and as it happened iPhone was the next big thing. RIM assumed that they would just continue being the best, so they didn't try make any changes until it was too late. And it bit them in the ass.

Not to say that anything that drastic will happen to Apple, but consumer sentiment has started to shift away from the iPhone to newer Android devices, similar to BB to iOS. Yes, Apple has a lot of demand for the iPhone 5, solid fundamentals, etc., but so did RIM. Tech stocks are always much more vulnerable to unmeasurables like public opinion, and with a lot of people who previously purchased iPhones looking for a change in phones, it's no surprise that analysts are predicting Apple's doom. I see Apple following a similar path as RIM in the sense that they do just assume they are the cool thing that everyone will always want. But like Samsung always says, other big things are already here. And so long as Apple continues to hype the exact same iOS over and over instead of trying new things, people will decide to try something different.

People like and want changes with technology. That's what makes it exciting to buy a new phone - it's new, it's different, and it does something that you haven't seen everyone else's phone do. iOS doesn't have that appeal anymore because it sold so well. It's not that it's bad or anything, it's just that everyone is familiar with it because everyone has used it. And if you've used it once, you've used it a thousand times. Just like BB. Time to try something different.

NOVEMBER 9, 2012 12:07 A.M.

Paulo Lin wrote:

I have to say Anonymous, that's the smartest open minded thing anyone has said in the blog, makes perfect sense to me

NOVEMBER 9, 2012 12:40 A.M.

Jorma wrote:

@Leonid Surpin, and what purpose would it serve for China to get the reputation for being unreliable to foreign companies? Plenty of other spots are rushing in with their cheap labor, which is the major concern for them right now. Everyone from the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia is getting in on it. Their only hope of retaining their grip is to encourage and coddle foreign companies.

But Tim Cook has been a disaster with one bad decision after another. His MO is giving in and dancing to the tune of the media demand: they HAD to have a dividend or a stock split, so he threw money at them. The ladies were screaming that suddenly they could no longer find their way to work from their homes because AAPL quite rightfully ditched Google, so he freaking apologizes. Idiocy. His job is not to make perfection that everyone loves instantly on the first try, it is to improve every product. He should have shut the hell up and just done that and the voices would die down. It is ALWAYS like that with the new. Had he been in charge, they'd still be using Flash on iPhone/iPad and using floppy disc drives. Making everyone sign a letter is so incredibly amateur that I suspect the reason Steve chose him as successor was because Cook is a highly skilled Yes Man and consummate heiny kisser and a weakened Jobs mistook that and the mock turtleneck for being like himself. Truth is, he has no cajones, he just wants to be liked.

NOVEMBER 9, 2012 8:15 A.M.

no Jeff wrote:

Big move today. Decided to wait on the Candy AAPL red BMW until next month as I dont want to miss the action today. My tecjnical guru has confirmed the move to $425 and I want to capture these gains, the ride can wait! What a move. All the so called experts have egg on their faces. The key for us new money playerais to take the opposite position of the talking heads. They all missed this amazing short opportunity.

NOVEMBER 9, 2012 7:00 P.M.

Anonymous wrote:

@No Jeff

Keep spinning that tale. We believe you. Maybe you will post from the Ferrari dealership next time instead of going out for a test drive.

NOVEMBER 12, 2012 4:49 P.M.

danielle wrote:

Apple is on the way to having a record quarter this quarter selling 50 million iPhones, and the iPhone 5 has not even been released in China or Taiwan yet, the world's largest phone market.

the iPad mini is not a low margin product. the 16GB model has a parts margin of 43% and many people are buying the 32/64GB and 4G models with even higher 50% margins. It is selling very well and taking market share from Google and Samsung. Apple has no iPad mini manufacturing issues and there is a 2 week order backlog of all models.

Apple is continuing to grow quickly and it's a great opportunity to buy its undervalued stock.

NOVEMBER 16, 2012 3:29 P.M.

No Jeff wrote:

Drill Down Baby, Drill. Went for the "PUT" gold today, looking for a $100 drop from $525 to $425 over next couple of weeks, almost a no brainer given the selling pressure from Hedge Funds to close their year end without rotten aapls sinking up their statements. What Hedge fund want to get caught holding a bag of aapls and trying to explain to their smart money clients that they hold this dog? No one. I bet not one hedge fund holds a single share of aapl by the end of the year.

Get Rich or Die Tryin' I was born to ROCK the Markets!

NOVEMBER 19, 2012 2:15 P.M.

BC2009 wrote:

@No Jeff

Still spinning it huh? I think the market manipulators like Doug Kass have already turned course so you're gonna lose all the bearish analyst estimates on AAPL. They've realized that they have already shaken out the nervous investors and it is time to swing things the other way. Looks like you are going to get taken for a lot of money by these guys. If you weren't spreading the same FUD as them then I might feel bad for you. Too bad you just got laid off from your job too. But hey.... maybe they have good bus service where you live and you can still watch the BMW's roll by from the window seat. After all, you did tell us that you were heading to the dealership to buy a new BMW with all the money you made on AAPL, but when you got there you decided to post to this forum instead of take a car for a test drive. We all fully believe you.... sure.... keep it up buddy.

About Tech Trader Daily

Tech Trader Daily is a blog on technology investing written by Barron’s veteran Tiernan Ray. The blog provides news, analysis and original reporting on events important to investors in software, hardware, the Internet, telecommunications and related fields. Comments and tips can be sent to: techtraderdaily@barrons.com.